By now, you have seen and enjoyed some of my recent re-renders, like the Mechwarrior thingie or the somewhat fantasy-like Super Castle, as well a handful of others. I'm sure you will find your way around the
3D gallery section if you put your mind and heart to it. As I've already explained on quite a few occasions,
models get so much more perceivably realistic when you plant them in a realistic or near-realistic setting.

My ekranoplan is the classic example. It was damn good the last time, but not perfect. And now, I've decided to
take it up a notch or three, by designing an airfield around it, complete with the taxiing and takeoff runaways,
some hangars, a control tower, and even the night lighting round the grass perimeter. This ought to be
interesting. You will, naturally, follow me, at this point.

Gallery

So we have an airfield at our hands. To make things look real-er, I used physical texture from our human life.
For example, the concrete used for the hangars comes from real images of USAF hangars. So does the hexagonal
pattern of the runway, borrowed from the Russians. We also have the Top Gun logo featured on the side of the
hangar walls, and with the tower in the background, runway stripes and lettering, plus those lights adorning the
runway sides, you get a plenty of realism to enjoy the actual model. Or maybe not. But who cares.

However, that was not good enough for me, so I added some decals, of a would-be air force, including insignia and
squadron numbers. And the landing gear received a genuine tire track, all of which add to making the project
appeal more than it was the last time, without any actual changes to its lines and planes and curves. Then, I
submitted the model to the magic of Kerkythea and made it a
reality.

A handful of side shots, with different skins and lighting conditions:

Three planes - one taxiing, one getting ready to take off, and another hiding inside a hangar, all against a
lovely backdrop of a real city, with some nice, post-rain late spring European sky, sort of. Then, on top of
that, a sprinkling of GIMPfilters, for good measure.

Finally, let's go into some black & white and sepia, so we get that nice atomic 60s feel: